Information Technologies: Drivers of Business Success in the New Economy

Abstract

With the current information technological advances, businesses are becoming more social and the social commerce technologies, mostly common among the businesses are Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, blogging, Instagram etc. these social media technologies have grown in popularity over the last two years where both big and small retail businesses, particularly those with low-cost products, are now heavily benefitting from it. Despite the opportunities for authentic engagement and sales conversion that social commerce provides, many businesses are hesitant to "go social" with their purchasing and selling. As a result, this study investigates the relationship between information technologies (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, blogging, Instagram etc.) and business success among small businesses in Saudi Arabia. In other words, the study attempts to relate social media as drivers of business success. The research design is cross-sectional survey in nature with a total population of 103,652 SMEs manufacturing firms in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The sample size for this study is 383 as calculated by a previous study. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the 383 manufacturing SMEs that participated in the study. Survey questionnaire was adopted while self-administered procedure was used to distribute and retrieve the questionnaire from the respondents. The collected data was anaysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) through regression analysis technique was tested the hypothesis. The study found that there is a positive significant association between information technologies (social media digital marketing) and business success at r=.444** with p<0.01. It was equally found that Information Technologies (social media digital marketing) is statistically significantly related to business success at p<0.05. The study concluded that information technologies such as social media digital marketing comprising of Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, blogging, Instagram etc. positively affect small business success. Finally, the study provided some limitations and suggestions for future studies in this area of study.